abstract

This paper analyses strategic governance and responsible management insights in selected Hindu scriptures, with emphasis on the Arthashastra, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads and the Manusmriti. It examines how traditional concepts of counsel, prudence, accountability, restraint, welfare and duty can be compared with modern management ideas such as strategic planning, corporate governance, decision-making and social responsibility. The study uses qualitative textual coding supported by descriptive and inferential statistical interpretation. The findings show that the Arthashastra has the highest number of coded management units, with 84 instances, and is especially dominant in strategy and governance. A chi-square value of 80.065 with 18 degrees of freedom and significance below .001 indicates a statistically meaningful association between scripture and management theme, while Cramer's V of 0.309 suggests moderate association strength. Regression results show that theme frequency and transferability jointly explain a large proportion of variation in modern-management alignment scores, with R squared of 0.826. The paper argues that traditional governance ideas can enrich contemporary management by strengthening prudence, accountability, stakeholder concern and long-term thinking. However, it also stresses that scriptural insights must be interpreted critically and filtered through modern standards of legality, equality and human dignity. The paper contributes to culturally inclusive management research by presenting a structured account of how strategy and governance can be studied through Indian knowledge traditions.